


i'll be your hero and win it (when the lights go out)

by nirav



Category: RWBY
Genre: F/F, zombiepocalypse au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-19
Updated: 2019-07-19
Packaged: 2020-07-08 05:53:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19864567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nirav/pseuds/nirav
Summary: The apocalypse came and went, and society fell along with the rest of their families, but they found each other and built a home.





	i'll be your hero and win it (when the lights go out)

**Author's Note:**

> for [thecousinsdangereux](https://thecousinsdangereux.tumblr.com/), an absolute monster of a human who slamdunked me into this fandom with absolutely zero remorse. what a jerk.
> 
> based on [this picture](https://smallandsundry.tumblr.com/post/186388417860/so-i-am-working-on-a-rwby-apocalypse-au-thing-w) by [smallandsundry](https://smallandsundry.tumblr.com/) that you should all go enjoy, for a myriad of reasons.

It’s been a quiet few weeks, which means it’s been weeks since she’s seen Yang in the daylight. She’d forgotten, really, how Yang’s always at her best in the sun, that she practically burns with light. Months of careful movement through the desert, sleeping during the days while the solar panels charge and alternating watch shifts for the enormous spread of empty around them, and Blake has thrived-- she moves like shadows, light and quiet-- but Yang has struggled and Weiss has watched as she’s dragged herself up early before the sun went down every night, when it’s still Blake’s watch shift, to slide out of the tent and sprawl out in the disappearing sunlight.

It’s been a quiet few weeks, but it’s the dead middle of the day, hot and baking with the sun high and heat piercing through the tent, leaving Blake and Weiss pushed far to one side away from Yang and the heat she always emanates, when Ruby yells out from her watch shift and there’s the sound of her rifle cocking. They’re all up in an instant, tumbling out of the tent, Yang’s prosthetic banging against Weiss’s hip on the way as she yanks at the wires connecting it to the solar panels.

“Is it charged?” Weiss tosses Yang’s handgun over to her with one hand, blinking rapidly in the overbright sunlight and slinging her bow over her shoulder with the other. Blake pauses at her side, eyes on Yang and hand curling automatically at Weiss’s elbow as she hooks the quiver onto Wiess’s belt.

Yang shoots the both of them a grin and cocks her arm with a series of whirring clicks. “Guess we’ll find out,” she says, blowing them a kiss, and sprints over to where Ruby had been holding watch, sending Ruby and her sniper rifle up onto the roof of the truck. Blake rolls her eyes, so hard Weiss can feel it through her whole body, and pauses to press a kiss to her cheek before adjusting her belt full of throwing knives and bounding over to take her place at Yang’s ten. 

Weiss huffs out a sigh and reroutes to the truck to retrieve one of the spare pistols. She shoves it into the back of Yang’s belt before taking her place to Yang’s right. She can never see Yang from here, but she can feel her, warm and bright and solid.

“Thanks, babe,” Yang says, taking a moment to hipcheck her, and Weiss rolls her eyes. “But I got this.”

There are only six coming at them, far enough away in the expansive visibility of the desert that they have plenty of time to settle and set, and a crack sounds behind them from Ruby, and one drops. 

“Save some for the rest of us!” Yang yells over her shoulder. “Stupid long range rifles.”

“Not my fault you suck,” Ruby yells back at her, and lets another shot loose. Another one drops, and Yang lets out a strangled yelp of irritation.

“Weiss,” she whines out. “Make her stop.”

“I will not.” Weiss pivots and holsters her gun just so she can slap at Yang’s arm uselessly. The metal is hot under her palm, part Yang and part charging and part sunlight, and Yang sticks her tongue out. “This isn’t a  _ game _ , Yang.”

“I mean, out here?” Yang shrugs and drops her arm down so she can face Weiss, flicks a finger out at the edge of her eyepatch in that infuriatingly charming way she always does. “It’s basically an arcade game at this distance.”

She ducks under Weiss’s flying elbow and kneels, pivots, flings her arm out and fires. Two more disappear into a ball of fire and light, and Yang glances up at Weiss with a smirk and a wink.

“See if you get any anytime soon,” Weiss mutters.

“I mean, I guess if you don’t want to participate then we could always--”

“Nope,” Blake yells out. She’s up on the roof of the truck with Ruby, turning in a slow circle and scanning the surroundings. “Weiss, two o’clock.”

Weiss fires without checking, too lazy at the moment to draw and arrow that she’ll have to retrieve later, and hums, satisfied, when another one drops.

“Don’t suppose you guys want to not talk about sex when I’m around, do you?” Ruby says, propping her chin on her rifle. 

“You’re always around, though,” Yang says.

“Exactly,” Ruby throws back at her. “It’s bad enough that I have to hear you  _ having _ sex half the time, but I shouldn’t also have to hear you talk about it.”

“You’re just cranky because you’re not getting any,” Yang says, flopping down to sit facing Ruby, sprawling her weight back on her elbows. She drops her head back and closes her eyes, breathes in deep, and Weiss pulls in a deep breath because it’s been so long since she’s seen Yang in the sunlight she thrives in. Weeks of trekking through the desert to scavenge a solar farm, to haul them back through the desert, to fight their way through one incoherent scavenging party after another. Weeks of being nocturnal, of Yang grumbling about sleeping during the day, of Weiss and Blake doing their best to keep her spirits up because Yang always thrived in the daylight in a way none of the rest of them did. Weeks of not seeing Yang like this, warm and strong and  _ bright _ .

Weiss glances back to the truck, to where Ruby’s got her eye back to the scope but Blake is looking down at Yang too, mouth soft and eyes softer, and Weiss breathes in slowly, breathes out, turns away to watch the last of the stragglers coming at them so Yang can stay where she is. 

She fires off a shot, and then another, and the last two fall. Ruby whines when Weiss drops them, muttering about it being unfair, and Weiss holsters her weapon smoothly.

“Be faster next time, then,” she says dismissively. “Or don’t. No point in wasting sniper bullets at this range.” 

“That probably didn’t need all four of us,” Blake says as she hops down off the truck and holds a hand up blindly for Ruby to hand her the rifle. 

“Yeah, but it was fun,” Yang yells from where she’s now sprawled out on the ground, basking in the sunlight. She flings her left fist up towards the sky. “Zombies zero, Team RWBY six billion and one.”

“Shouldn’t the whole you-lost-your-arm and Weiss-lost-her-eye thing count for at least two to the zombies?” Ruby hops down delicately and pauses, frowns, wipes at the dust on her shirt. 

“Excuse you,” Weiss huffs out. “I still won that one. That zombie is  _ very _ dead.”

“What she said,” Yang says, and her hand curls softly around Weiss’s ankle, thumb running over the skin habitually. It sends a shiver up her whole right side, despite the sun and the heat, and she hums softly, soft enough that only Yang can hear it.

“Can we go back to sleep now?” Blake grumbles. “It’s  _ hot _ .”

“Only ‘cos you’re here.” Yang sits up abruptly, flashing a wide grin at Blake and leaning against Weiss’s leg. “Because you’re  _ hot _ .”

“I’m breaking up with you,” Blake deadpans, despite the way her mouth twitches up into the smile she only has for Yang, for Wiess, for  _ them _ , warm and calm and steady. “After I sleep.”

“I’ll take watch,” Yang says with a shrug. “Ruby, get some sleep.”

“Are you actually going to watch or just lay around in the sun?”

“I’ll stay up, too,” Weiss says, only partly because Yang’s still got a hand on her ankle. She glances down to where Yang’s head is leaning against her knee, bright and shining gold under the desert sun. “I’m awake now.”

“If we get overrun by zombies because you’re making out, I’m leaving you both behind,” Ruby says through a yawn as she disappears into the tent. 

“We take our jobs very seriously, you brat,” Yang shouts after her, even as her hand creeps further up Weiss’s leg, sliding along her calf and up to her knee, and she winks at Blake.

“Better you two than me,” Blake mutters, but she crosses over from the truck to press a brief kiss to Weiss’s mouth, her lips cool somehow even in this heat, and then to the top of Yang’s head. “Don’t wake me up if it’s less than fifteen, it’s gross out here.”

“Yes ma’am,” Yang says with a salute, and Weiss rolls her eyes and slaps at the top of her head. Blake’s mouth hitches up into a smile for the both of them and then she disappears into the tent, leaving them to stand watch.

“Are you actually going to keep watch?” Weiss says. “Since you’re the one who actually has two eyes at this point.”

“I am absolutely not,” Yang says immediately. “Unless you’re talking about keep watch on that ass--”

“Yang!” Weiss hisses out, slapping at the top of her head again. “Your  _ sister _ is ten feet away!”

“Yes she is!” Ruby screeches from inside the tent, her indignation followed by Blake’s familiar laugh.

“God, you’re so annoying,” Weiss says with a huff. She yanks her leg free from Yang, sniffing with satisfaction when Yang flops over onto her side without the support.

“You love me,” Yang says from the ground, flashing that same winning smile up at Weiss that works on her every time but that’s somehow so much  _ more _ , now, when they’ve barely seen each other in daylight in three weeks. It’s never seemed possible to forget how bright everything about Yang is, or how calming everything about Blake is, how strong Weiss always feels standing between them, but this trip-- this has been harder than she’d expected. 

She glances out towards the horizon, turning in a slow circle to see if anything is stirring and, finding nothing, kneels down onto the dry-baked ground so she can kiss Yang, soft and quiet and warm.

“Yeah,” she says quietly, close enough that it disappears into Yang’s mouth. “I do.”

“ _ Yeah _ you do,” Yang says with another grin, brilliant and bright as always, so bright Weiss is sure it could burn her alive and she would let it. Her hand hooks into Weiss’s collar and holds her in place, head craning up off the ground so she can kiss her again. “And Blake too. She’s like. Whatever. Fine, I guess.”

Weiss rolls her eyes and slaps at Yang’s stomach. 

“Way to ruin the moment.”

“What, talking about Blake ruins the moment?” Yang lifts an eyebrow at her. “She’s going to be so  _ hurt _ , Weiss, how dare you.”

“Blake is going to murder you both if you don’t shut,” Blake says from the tent. “Stop making out when I’m not there and keep watch, assholes.”

“Stop making out at all!” Ruby yells after her. 

Weiss rolls her eyes and climbs to her feet, holding a hand down to pull Yang up. Yang climbs up to the roof of the truck first, reaching back down to pull Weiss up like she weighs nothing and settling down to sit, back to back, staring out at the empty desert around them. Yang is as warm as the roof they’re sitting on, and Weiss wiggles her shoulders so she can lean more comfortably back against her.

It’s peaceful, the desert, quiet in its desolation and distance from what remained of their world, from the zombies, from the bandits and the wild animals and the danger. 

“It’s nice out here,” Weiss says without thinking, quietly, pressing further back into Yang. “I almost don’t want to go home.”

“Yeah?” Yang’s head drops back onto her shoulder, staring up at the sky. 

“I mean, I do,” Weiss says with a shrug that makes Yang whine. “But it’s been nice to be somewhere quieter. There’s always so much going on at home.”

“Yeah,” Yang mumbles. 

“Your eyes are closed again, aren’t they?”

“Totally.”

Weiss sighs and shifts so she can press a kiss to Yang’s forehead, sinking into the drowsy mumble of content it nets her. It’s not home, this far out in the desert with none of the protections and walls they’ve built to keep their family safe, but it’s quiet and she can see Blake’s form curled up in one of the corner of the tent like always, pressing against tent walls just enough that they shift minutely with every deep and even breath she takes, and she’s pressed fully against Yang, who shines bright in the beating sunlight. It’s not home, but it almost is, and it’s peaceful.

* * *

Yang slips in and out of sleep for hours, eventually giving up on even the pretense of keeping watching and sprawling across the roof with her head in Weiss’s lap, Weiss’s hand in her hair absently. She wakes up when Weiss flicks a finger against her prosthetic, the sound ringing quietly and dying in the dead air around them. The shadows have stretched out, reaching further out past the edge of their camp, as the sun drops lower in the sky.

“Sleepy,” Yang mumbles, curling closer and pushing her head against Weiss’s stomach. “Five more minutes.”

“We need to pack up.” Weiss’s hand is soft in her hair, and Yang lets out a whine. 

“Later.”

“Now.” Weiss’s fingers tangle into her hair and pull, just hard enough, and Yang cracks an eye open.

“If you wanted to have kinky rooftop sex you could’ve just  _ said _ \--”

An apple arcs through the air and smacks into Yang’s back with a thud. Yang flails around, arm cocking and ready, only to see Ruby glaring at her with her arms folded.

“Stop being gross and help me pack up the panels.”

“You’re no fun when Penny isn’t around, you know,” Yang says with a grumble. She hops off the roof and holds her arms up blindly so she can glare right back at Ruby while she lifts Weiss down, hands firm and familiar at her waist.

Blake appears behind them and slaps at the back of Yang’s head. “Be helpful, will you?” She tilts her head over to where half of the solar panels they’d pillaged are laid out. 

“You just want to ogle me lifting big heavy things, don’t you?” 

“Sure, let’s go with that,” Blake says flatly. She hands a bottle of water to Weiss and curls around her back, yawning and dropping her chin onto Weiss’s shoulder. “I’ll take rear watch, you should sleep.”

“I’m okay,” Weiss says ,even as she yawns and her whole body shakes with it. 

“Uh huh,” Blake says with an eye roll that Wiess can feel through her whole body. “Ruby’s got the big gun and Yang can drive. You need to sleep.”

“We’re letting Yang drive?”

“I heard that!” Yang yells from where she’s stacking solar panels, and Weiss follows the movement of her arms as she lifts them, muscles rippling under the skin. Blake’s hands tighten around her waist, and Weiss sinks back into it more. 

“You should sleep,” Blake says again after a long moment of shared ogling at Yang. She nips at the line of Weiss’s jaw and pulls back, hands firm on her shoulders and marching her towards the cab of the truck. “In you go, princess.”

“You’re not the boss of me,” Weiss says, whine creeping into her voice, even as she lets herself be loaded into the truck and yawns again. 

“Sure, of course not.” Blake pushes a protein bar into her hand and offers her a stern look. “Water, food, sleep.”

The truck shakes as Yang loads the panels into the trailer, and Weiss grumbles at the jostling. There’s a clunk as Ruby hops from the trailer up onto the roof, and another as she settles down to sit at the gun mount Weiss had leaned against for the better part of the afternoon. 

“I should take rear watch,” Weiss says through a yawn. “I have a longer range.”

“Just because I don’t like guns doesn’t mean I can’t use them,” Blake says indignantly. “Seriously, Weiss. Sleep, will you? Please?”

“Oh, you got her to say please,” Yang says, popping up behind her. “Now you  _ have _ to agree.” She presses against Blake’s back, fingers splaying out over her stomach, tracking down to the familiar scar on her hip and then back up again. Blake presses back into her, one hand covering hers, and keeps her eyes on Weiss expectantly.

“Fine,” Weiss mumbles. “I’ll sleep.” She grabs the night vision goggles off of the dashboard and leans half out of the truck to hook them around Blake’s neck. 

“Thank you,” Blake says as Weiss pushes her way back upright and into the truck, soft enough that Ruby can’t hear but Weiss and Yang can, and she squeezes Weiss’s hand, presses a kiss to her scarred knuckles, shuts the truck door. 

Blake squeezes Yang’s hand and turns around to face her. “Make sure she sleeps, yeah? She barely slept at all this morning.”

“Of course,” Yang says, eyes wide and solemn even as one side of her mouth hitches up into a smile. She kisses Blake, short and filthy enough that Ruby yells out her indignation, and slaps her ass on the way over to the other side of the truck. “Onwards we go, heathens!”

Blake rolls her eyes and settles on the trailer, pulling her knees up to her chest and resting her chin on them. Behind her, Ruby slaps at the roof of the truck, and Yang pulls away from their campsite, driving them towards home.

* * *

Weiss wakes up abruptly and to Yang’s hands tight on the steering wheel, her jaw clenched.

“What is it?”

“Oh, hey,” Yang says, her voice deceptively light. “We’re almost home, by the way. Another ten miles or so.”

“What’s going on?” Weiss says sharply, wide awake and sitting up. 

“Company,” Yang says after a long moment. Weiss cranes around to squint out the back of the cab, past the outlines of the solar panels in the dark. “Looks like some garden variety human assholes this time.”

Pricks of light flash in peripheries of her vision, headlights flashing, and Weiss’s teeth grind together. 

“Keep driving,” she says firmly. “I’ll get Blake inside.”

“She won’t like that even a little bit.”

“Well, maybe if she chose to carry some sort of long range weapon instead of knives she wouldn’t have to,” Weiss says with a sniff. She rolls the window down and crawls out, up onto the roof where her bow is latched onto the side of the gun mount. Ruby glances over at her for only a moment before ducking back down to the scope.

“Looks like about ten, maybe twelve,” she says briskly. 

“Can you pick them off?”

“Maybe,” Ruby says after a moment. “But not definitively.”

“Okay.” Weiss lets out a heavy breath and slings her bow across her chest, hook the quiver to her belt. She pauses just long enough to grip at Ruby’s shoulder before sliding down from the roof onto the trailer, carefully not looking down to the moonlit ground racing underneath them as Yang presses the truck faster. She ducks under the stacked pyramid of solar panels and slides up to Blake’s side.

“Thought you were napping, princess,” Blake says without looking away from the lights behind them.

“I’m awake.” Weiss’s hand curls around her elbow. “Get in the cab.”

“I’m fine, Weiss,” Blake says shortly. 

“Blake,” Weiss says, quiet and firm. “If we have to stop, we need you fresh. You  _ and _ Yang. So let me and Ruby handle it until then.”

Blake’s jaw tightens, arguments building behind her eyes, and Wiess sets her own jaw and glares right back. Blake relents-- she always does, for Weiss, the way Yang always does for her-- and sucks in a deep breath.

“Be safe,” she says. Her palm presses against Weiss’s cheek briefly, thumb skimming by just under the edge of her eye patch.

“Always am,” Weiss counters. She smiles when Blake rolls her eyes and doesn’t protest when Blake hooks the night vision goggles over her neck and the carabiner from the trailer to the back of her belt before climbing back the way Weiss had come. Weiss settles down into an easy crouch, bow hanging in one hand, and stares back at the growing headlights coming closer to them.

Minutes creep by, headlights brightening and engine sounds growing louder, and Weiss holds her breathing steady and her grip loose. 

“Motorcycles,” Ruby yells out from the roof. “At ten.”

Weiss pivots to the left and hauls an arrow out, tracking the headlights that have split, some motorcycles and some cars. She breathes slowly, keeping her heartbeat level, and tracks a single headlight at thirty yards, matching pace with their truck, and then releases into the dark.

There’s a screech and clatter of the motorcycle crashing, riderless, and Weiss smiles at the hit. She draws another arrow and waits for Ruby to call out the next one. A shot from the rifle sounds out, and one of the sets of car headlights swerves and shudders and then flips. 

“Two!” Ruby calls out, and Weiss pivots again, draws, lets loose. Another motorcycle crashes and disappears in the dust behind them.

The remainder have closed in, lights bright and growing closer, a truck larger than theirs closing in behind them. This close, the white t-shirt of the man hanging off the side of the driver’s side running board is visible and bright, and Weiss pulls another arrow as he bears down and readies to jump.

Air whizzes by Weiss’s ear, and a knife appears in the man’s throat. He falls away from the truck and Wiess whirls around to glare through the gaps in the solar panels to where Blake is leaning out the driver’s window past Yang, another knife already in hand.

“That one was mine!” She bellows, even though there’s no way Blake can hear her, but is rewarded with a blown kiss regardless. 

“Stupid knives,” Weiss says with a grumble, resetting up onto her feet. There’s barely fifteen feet between her and the truck bearing down on them. Someone else is hanging off the other side, a gun in his hand, and she whips her bow up and fires without waiting. An arrow slams into his eye and he falls as well. 

Ruby fires at the windshield, bullets cracking into the glass one after another but failing to break it. Weiss hefts her gun and fires as well, and the windshield shudders but holds, bearing ever closer.

Weiss glances back to where Ruby’s scowling from behind the rifle and huffs out an indignant sigh. Bulletproof windshields are basically cheating. She unhooks the carabiner from her belt and braces one hand against the stacks of solar panels behind her, counting down as the truck grows closer and closer, and then leaps.

She catches onto the grill of the truck with one hand, the other barely hanging onto her bow, and her feet scrabble for purchase on the bumper, finding it after a series of terrifyingly long seconds. She glances back long enough to see Ruby on the roof, eyes wide, and Blake behind her, fury and worry written into the set of her mouth, and sets her jaw and pulls herself up. 

Knives flash from over the roof and she ducks, barely, under the swinging strikes coming at her from the man who’d suddenly appeared on the roof and dove onto the hood. She ducks under his next strike and spins him around, slams her boot into the back of his knee, flings him off the side of the truck. The driver glares up at her, mouth twisting in anger, and Weiss lunges forward, slams her boot into the breaking glass of the windshield once, twice, a third time until the edges of the windshield start to rip away from the frame. 

He pulls a gun, taking aim, and she slings an arrow up from the quiver at her hip and flings it with one hand through the falling windshield. It glances off target and buries in his stomach instead of his throat, and the truck lurches under her as he loses control abruptly. The momentum sends the truck into a skid and Weiss is flung off the hood, the ground rushing up to meet her, and she lands on her side, air bursting out of her lungs, and blacks out.

* * *

She wakes to the unmistakable warmth of Yang at her back. Her lungs protest the next breath, filled with dust and overwhelmed by the fiery ache building out of her ribcage, and she coughs and groans and reaches out automatically for Yang’s hand. She gets her leg instead, fingers digging into her thigh as Yang shifts, pivots, fires again without pausing.

“You doing okay down there?” Yang fires again and then flings her arm up when a baseball bat crashes down towards her head, letting it skid off her metal forearm and follows it up with a driving punch from her other arm. The man’s head snaps back with the punch and his knees give out, and Yang follows it up with an elbow to his temple the leaves him sprawled and unconscious on the ground. 

Weiss sucks in an aching breath and curls around her ribs, pinpricks of pain creeping along her side where the impact had left her arm and side covered in abrasions. Yang crouches down at her side again, a hand soft on her shoulder. 

“Stay down,” she says firmly. “If you pass out before Blake can yell at you then she’s going to kill us both.” She fires again with her arm and yanks Weiss’s gun from its holster to fire that as well, and Weiss ducks down around her surely broken ribs. Blake is a flicker of shadow, sliding between attackers and flinging knives with ease, each one burying itself in a target that falls and doesn’t get back up. The crack of Ruby’s rifle fills the air along with Yang letting out a triumphant yell as she catches a leaping attacker with her prosthetic around the throat and flings him twenty feet away.

It ends in minutes, Weiss’s breathing almost back to normal and Yang’s hand still on her shoulder, the ground around them littered with bodies and lost weapons. Blake turns in a slow circle, knives curled into her palms.

“Ruby?”

“All clear,” she says after a moment, and Blake’s posture breaks immediately. She skids over the ground on her knees to Weiss’s side, hands hovering over her damaged torso.

“You’re such an idiot,” she breathes out.

“You stole my shot,” Weiss says with a groan, turning her head into Blake’s thigh and squeezing her eyes shut. “I’m okay.”

“Sure, broken ribs, no big deal,” Yang says cheerfully. “At least you didn’t lose an eye this time.”

“Rude,” Weiss wheezes out, but it makes her smile anyways, and she looks up to where Blake’s glaring down at her, anger softening under worry. Yang’s hands press against Blake’s cheeks and she reminds her, quietly to  _ breathe, we’re all okay _ , and Weiss drags her bloodied hand up to press against the back of Yang’s, moving with Blake’s heavy breaths.

“So you’re not going to yell at me, then?”

“Oh, we’re all going to yell at you,” Yang says, flashing a grin down at her that lights up the darkness around them and wraps around Weiss the same way Blake’s worry has. “But we’re, like, almost home. So later. When everyone else can, too.”

“So unfair,” Weiss mutters out, and coughs again. Before she can protest, Yang’s arms are around her, lifting her gently enough, somehow that her ribs don’t hurt worse. She considers protesting, but instead lets her head fall onto Yang’s shoulder. Blake trails after them as Yang loads Blake carefully into the cab of the truck, pushing the passenger seat back until she can almost lay down.

“I’ll drive,” Blake says, hand curling around Yang’s hip. “If Ruby’s okay for it.”

“I’m good,” Ruby pipes up, sliding around the two of them so she can plant her hands on her hips and glare up at Weiss. “I’m also going to yell at you. Later, when you don’t look so pathetic.”

Weiss wrinkles her nose but can’t muster the energy to protest, and instead waves one hand uselessly. Ruby huffs out a breath and climbs back up to the roof, and Yang flops down onto the back of the trailer heavily, shaking the whole car.

Blake settles into the driver’s seat, hands tight on the wheel and breaths coming slow and measured.

“You scared the shit out of me, you know,” she says after a long moment. “We’re a team, Weiss. You don’t have to take unnecessary risks like that.”

“It seemed like a good idea at the time,” Weiss mumbles out, breathing shallowly against the way her ribcage tries to shatter around her every breath. 

“We’re a  _ team _ ,” Blake says again. “That means you don’t get to do stupid things like that just so you’re the only one taking on risk. We protect each other, as a team.”

“I know,” Weiss says after a long moment. “I just--forget, sometimes.”

“Forget,” Blake mutters, shoving the truck into gear and starting off. “That this is a relationship, and that we have an agreement, and that that means that we don’t do dumb shit anymore just to try and protect everyone else.” She huffs out a breath and glares over at Weiss. “I’m gonna tell Yang you  _ forgot _ we’re in a relationship, she’s going to bang you into oblivion out of indignation that you could possibly  _ forget _ .”

“Don’t you dare,” Weiss says, and it cracks in the middle, as much from the ache in her ribs as from guilt. “I’m fine, it’s just cracked ribs.”

“You still scared her,” Blake says quietly. “You didn’t see her face when you went flying. I did. She was terrified.”

“I’m sorry,” Weiss mumbles. “I-- I’m doing better about it. I’m trying.”

“I know it’s hard,” Blake says, slow and careful, eyes locked in front of them, giving Weiss the privacy to navigate the moment. “And we’ve had-- more practice, I guess. More time to get used to the idea that it’s not my job to save her, and it’s not her job to save me. We look out for each other. It took us both a long time, too.” 

She peels one hand off the steering wheel and reaches over blindly, waiting until Weiss takes hold and slots their fingers together, familiar calluses and lines of bone and muscle grounding Weiss and taking the focus off of the pain in her ribs.

“You don’t have to  _ apologize _ for it, Weiss,” she says eventually. “We know, we get it.” She glances over at her, jaw finally softening. “Loving people is terrifying. You always want to save them.”

“Something like that,” Weiss breathes out, staring up at the ceiling. 

“But you have to realize that it’s not about  _ saving _ us, it’s about being there with us. Because losing you--” She cuts herself off, hand tightening unintentionally over Weiss’s damaged knuckles. “It’s not worth it if we lose you. So you  _ can’t _ do things like that, okay?”

It wraps around Weiss, curling between her ribs and holding steady, the way Blake looks at her. She cranes her head back, ignoring the way it pulls at her ribcage, and looks back through the rear window of the cab to where she can see the back of Yang’s head, golden-bright even in the dark, her broad shoulders and glinting prosthetic. Yang turns around, as if she can feel Weiss’s eyes on her, and she smiles even with worry still written plainly into her features. 

_ I’m sorry _ , Weiss mouths, sure that Yang can see her, and one side of Yang’s mouth lifts up in a broader smile. She shakes her head and rolls her eyes, flaps a hand in Weiss’s direction.

“I’m sorry,” she repeats out loud, pulling back to face Blake’s profile again. 

“It’s okay,” Blake says quietly. “I just-- you scared us. So much. Don’t do that again, especially not when you're on a  _ moving truck _ .”

“Yes ma’am,” Weiss says as saucily as she can manage, only for it to peter off into a groan, and she drops her head back against the seat. “Are we there yet?”

“Just about,” Blake says with a squeeze of her hand. “Surely you can’t actually want to go home now, where anything Pyrrha yells at you is going to be  _ way _ scarier than any of us.”

Weiss lets out another groan, and Blake laughs, loud and bright, into the early morning air. It settles into the cracks in Weiss’s ribs and washes over the damaged skin of her side. She pulls in a deep breath and closes her eyes and breathes easy.

* * *

The next time Weiss wakes up, the trailer is already detached and the truck is on the lift system Ruby and Yang had built the year before, scavenged from a Los Angeles parking garage. It rumbles through the truck as it’s lifted up to the elevated, fortified house towering over what used to be the Malibu cliffs. They’d taken over it years ago, back when they were just Ruby and Weiss and Blake-and-Yang, rattling around the oversized house until they’d run into Pyrrha and Jaune and Nora and Ren on a scavenging mission in what was left of Santa Barbara. 

Yang and Ruby are already at the top when the make it there, talking with Pyrrha. Weiss lets out a sigh when Pyrrha sees her through the windshield, and Blake huffs out a laugh.

“Told you so,” she says.

“Don’t suppose you want to distract her so I can escape, do you?”

“Absolutely not,” Blake says with a flourish. “But you can come complain about it later and I promise we’ll only make just a tiny bit of fun of you.”

“Coward,” Weiss mutters. She pulls in a breath and squares her shoulders, posture sliding upright and precise, and steps out of the car to an immediate whirlwind of Pyrrha inspecting her injuries and whisking her away. She looks helplessly back over her shoulder to where Yang and Blake are watching, Yang wrapped casually around Blake’s back and Blake’s hands covering hers.

“You are  _ unbelievable, _ ” Pyrrha mutters as she steers Weiss into the kitchen and sits her on a chair at the table. “This was supposed to be a no-risk trip, Weiss!”

“There’s always risk,” Weiss says with a groan as she lets Pyrrha work her shirt up over her head, exposing the bruising patterned over her left side. 

“And you just had to have some big hero moment that almost got you killed anyways?” Pyrrha dumps peroxide onto a towel and presses it against the abrasions starting at Weiss’s shoulder, hands gentle in spite of the way anger snaps in her eyes. 

“Blake already yelled at me,” Weiss mumbles, avoiding her eyes and biting down on the inside of her cheek as the peroxide burns her side.

“Yeah, well, just because your girlfriends yelled at you doesn’t mean your best friend won’t also yell at you.” Pyrrha dabs at the ripped skin Weiss’s hand softly. “You have to take care of yourself, Weiss. You’re not on your own anymore. It would hurt all of us, hurt Blake and Yang, to lose you.”

“I know,” Weiss says softly. “And I’m sorry.”

Pyrrha hums quietly, jaw tight, and continues to work methodically along Weiss’s abrasions. She discards the bloodied towel eventually and presses her palm gently against Weiss’s side, pressing carefully along her ribcage.

“I don’t think they’re broken,” she says after a long moment. “I can wrap them up after you get cleaned up.”

“I don’t suppose you guys got that water pump working while we were gone, did you?”

Pyrrha huffs out a sigh. “We did, actually. Though I’m tempted not to let you get the first shower just because you took a stupid risk and almost got killed.”

“Pyrrha,” Weiss says sharply. “Seriously?”

Pyrrha sighs again and tilts her head towards the stairs. “Go for it.”

Weiss nearly slips with how quickly she stands up, the floor slick with spilled peroxide and her boots damp, but she catches herself on Pyrrha’s shoulder and pauses just long enough to kiss Pyrrha’s cheek fleetingly before powerwalking out of the room and up to the bathroom.

The bathroom is blissfully empty and she marches straight to the shower and turns the knob hopefully, staring up until it sputters and hot water starts to pour out.

“Oh, thank God,” she mumbles. It takes her longer than she’d like to strip out of her clothes, her skin stiff and ribs aching, but it’s worth it when she steps into the first real shower she’s taken in three years.

There’s a familiar clatter outside the door, Yang detaching her arm for tuning and Blake collecting her knives and discarding them to clean them later, leaving them in the supposed linen closet across the hall. The familiar low murmur of their voices, too low for her to make out, washes over her just like the water and she turns her face to the water and smiles.

* * *

She finds Yang and Blake on the top floor after her shower, crowded around one of the windows. There’s music blasting tinnily out of the speaker of the iPod, ancient and dusty, that Yang had found two years ago and that Ruby had found a way to charge with solar power, some deeply unfortunate country song ringing out from the iPod’s place in Yang’s back pocket.

“What’s going on?”

“Stragglers,” Yang says without looking away. She raises her handgun and lets a shot loose. “And that’s six to me, thank you  _ very _ much.” She twists her hips in time with the music and salutes with an imaginary hat. “Yee, and if I may,  _ haw _ .”

“Shut up,” Blake says lazily, hipchecking her out of the way. She fires twice, pauses, and then once more. “Make that eight for me.”

“What are we playing for?” Weiss digs an elbow into Blake’s back so she can peer over her shoulder, down to the remnants of highway down the cliff and the shuffling figures dotting along it. “Give me a gun, I want in.”

“You’re so far behind,” Yang says, even as she hands her gun to Weiss and steals one from Blake’s belt. “No handicaps, not even for handicaps.” She leans to one side so she can poke the end of her arm without the prosthetic against Weiss’s cheek.

Weiss wiggles her way between them, landing with Yang’s arm on her shoulder and one of Blake’s curled around her hip, and fires off half a dozen shots in rapid succession. She misses one, but five drop. 

“Who needs handicaps?” she says smugly. Yang presses a kiss to the back of her head and fires off another shot.

“You’re still losing, princess.”

“What are we playing for, though?”

“Loser sleeps in the middle,” Blake says immediately. “It’s too hot to be in the middle, especially with little miss walking fireball over there.”

“Deal,” Weiss says, and fires of four more shots. “Guess who’s winning now?”

Blake lets out a huff and drops three more and then promptly misses the next three when Weiss’s free hand slides under her shirt and along her stomach.

“That’s  _ cheating _ ,” Blake says with a glare.

“Says who?” Weiss lifts an eyebrow and one side of her mouth in a smirk at Blake’s indignation, and turns to fire, only to suck in a sharp breath and shoot wide from her target when Blake’s lips land on her throat. 

“Oh,” she mutters. “Well, when you put it that way.” She pulls at Blake by the belt and yanks her closer, tilting up into the kiss as best she can with her cracked ribs. Blake’s hands skim past her injuries and settle at her jaw, pulling her closer, and--

\--six more shots sound out next to them, startling them apart. Yang blinks innocently at them.

“I win,” she says blandly, pointing out to the now-empty street. “Which means  _ I _ get to be big spoon, you jerks.” She discards the guns onto the desk nearby and swoops Weiss up in one arm like she weighs nothing.

“Oh, I see, getting injured means you get  _ carried _ to bed,” Blake mumbles. 

“You’re just jealous,” Weiss says, one eyebrow raising before she hooks a leg around Yang’s waist and kisses the side of her neck. They nearly bump into the wall on the way to their room, Blake following with dark eyes, but make it without mishap somehow.

Weiss yawns as soon as she’s on the mattress, slapping a hand over her mouth. 

“Wow, you’re tired,” Yang deadpans. “Almost like getting hurt and needing to heal is exhausting or something.”

“I can rally,” Weiss says insistently, tugging at Yang’s shirt.

“Later,” Blake says, pushing Yang down onto the mattress as well. “After you sleep middle, because you lost.” She curls up on Weiss’s other side, one hand resting softly on her stomach, careful of the scraped and bruised skin. 

Yang flops down as well, murmuring an apology when Weiss grimaces at being jostled, and reaches across, holding the both of them easily. She presses a kiss to the side of Weiss’s head and wiggles until she’s more comfortable, and falls asleep almost immediately, just like always. On her other side, Blake falls into sleep quickly as well, curling impossible closer, tucking her face into the crook of Weiss’s neck and breathing softly against her skin. Sunlight filters in through the windows, catching in the gold of Yang’s hair and the dark warmth of Blake’s skin, lighting them both brightly as they sleep. 

The apocalypse came and went, and society fell along with the rest of their families, but they found each other and built a home. Weiss smiles up at the ceiling and sinks down into the mattress, one hand falling on top of Blake’s on her stomach and the other curling into Yang’s pocket, and drifts off to sleep.


End file.
